from "land grabbing" competition to interconnection! why do internet giants want to "tear down the wall"? ｜hot finance
2024-09-06
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on september 5, taobao released the latest announcement about the addition of wechat payment capabilities, stating that in order to enhance consumers' shopping experience, taobao plans to add wechat payment capabilities and gradually open them to all taobao sellers after september 12.
yesterday, the news of taobao and wechat's interoperability sparked heated discussions across the society and topped the trending searches on weibo. many users expressed their expectations for the interoperability between the two internet giants, taobao and tencent.
the cooperation and interconnection between wechat and taobao is also seen by many industry insiders as an act of "putting aside the grudges" between alibaba and tencent. from the tit-for-tat 10 years ago to the win-win cooperation today, what made these two internet companies shake hands and make peace? is the era of internet interconnection really coming?
alibaba and tencent's previous competition for land
as early as 10 years ago, when taobao app and wechat app came out, one was mainly engaged in online e-commerce business, and the other was mainly engaged in instant messaging. there was little competition between the two businesses. in 2013, with the launch of wechat payment function, alibaba and tencent became direct competitors in electronic payment channels. the two sides started a long battle for user groups and merchant coverage.
at the end of july 2013, alibaba announced the suspension of third-party application services related to wechat and cut off all wechat data interfaces. taobao sellers subsequently received a ban prohibiting sellers from posting wechat qr codes. in november 2013, wechat banned alibaba's instant messaging software "laiwang". after that, taobao store links on wechat could not be opened directly, and taobao's download links were also blocked and could only be opened by copying the browser. in terms of payment services, alibaba uses alipay as its largest payment service provider.
for tencent, after wechat and alibaba suspended their cooperation, it successively took over the payment services of its main competitors jd.com and pinduoduo, and integrated jd.com and pinduoduo mini-programs into wechat to share wechat social traffic.
with the rapid development of the internet economy, as leading internet giants, alibaba and tencent both hope to complete the business closed loop in their own fields as much as possible and form ecological barriers, but this move has also brought a "boomerang" to the future development of the two companies.
both sides have welcomed new powerful opponents
eleven years ago, in the emerging internet and e-commerce fields, tencent and alibaba maintained an oligopolistic competitive relationship. therefore, the unbundling of alibaba and tencent did play a role in protecting their own traffic ecology in the early years. however, today, my country's e-commerce platforms and internet economy are developing rapidly, and the e-commerce and internet industries have long been numerous, and the market competition landscape has undergone earth-shaking changes.
in the field of e-commerce, major software companies have followed the taobao model to divide up market profits. pinduoduo has become the biggest competitor of taobao e-commerce by relying on wechat social traffic and group buying discounts. in addition, taobao also needs to guard against the cannibalization of e-commerce business by platforms such as jd.com, douyin, and kuaishou. according to sina finance, as the three giants of e-commerce, taobao, pinduoduo, and jd.com, in the financial report for the first half of 2024, pinduoduo's revenue reached 183.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 104.9%; alibaba's revenue in the first half of the year was 465.11 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.1%, and jd.com's revenue in the first half of the year was 551.46 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.9%. from the financial report, alibaba's performance in the competition among the three giants is not good. in terms of growth, pinduoduo's development momentum is far stronger than taobao.
as for tencent, the rapid rise of bytedance in recent years has also attracted most of tencent's firepower. from zhang yiming and ma huateng's quarrels to tencent's high-profile announcement of the suspension of all business cooperation with bytedance, the pressure faced by tencent should not be underestimated. according to cailianshe, tencent disclosed in its second quarter financial report this year that its financial technology service revenue growth slowed to a low single-digit percentage, and the further slowdown in commercial payment revenue growth reflected the slow growth of consumer spending, indicating that tencent and its wechat pay have encountered bottlenecks.
after the interconnection, taobao's trillion-level transaction scale can obviously help wechat pay expand its incremental market. for alibaba, this cooperation will help enhance user stickiness. in the sinking market where wechat has a higher coverage, taobao can also use this to attract more users.
win-win cooperation is inseparable from antitrust governance
the cooperation between alibaba and tencent is also closely related to the country's increasingly intensified crackdown on anti-monopoly competition.
in august 2019, the general office of the state council issued the "guiding opinions on promoting the standardized and healthy development of the platform economy", which proposed to maintain the fair competition market order of the platform economy, especially to investigate and punish illegal acts such as abuse of market dominance to restrict transactions in accordance with the law. in september of the same year, the central bank announced the "financial technology (fintech) development plan (2019-2021)", which clearly proposed to "promote the interconnection and interoperability of barcode payments", break through the barriers of barcode payment services, and realize the mutual recognition and scanning of barcode logos of different apps and merchants.
in september 2021, zhao zhiguo, spokesman of the ministry of industry and information technology and director of the information and communications administration, also stated at a press conference that interconnection is an inevitable choice for the high-quality development of the internet industry, and allowing users to use the internet smoothly and safely is also the direction of the internet industry's efforts.
at present, in addition to alibaba and tencent, many internet giants such as meituan, alipay, douyin, and xiaohongshu have also joined the "interoperability" camp.
on december 27, 2021, kuaishou and meituan announced a strategic cooperation in interconnection. based on kuaishou's open platform, the two parties will integrate content scene marketing, online transactions and offline fulfillment service capabilities. in july this year, the two parties renewed the contract.
in january 2022, baidu, together with more than a dozen companies including meituan, xiaohongshu, sf express, ctrip, zhihu, tongcheng, maoyan, and 58.com, announced the start of in-depth cooperation in interconnection and interoperability, and carried out interconnection and interoperability cooperation in three major aspects: traffic, technology, and service ecology.
in the content field, in december 2023, xiaohongshu announced the establishment of the "zhongcao youshu data alliance", which will connect xiaohongshu's grass-growing data with the transaction data of other platforms through open data cooperation. from 2023 to 2024, bilibili established the spark plan and jinghuo plan with taobao and jd.com respectively, and also established a corresponding cooperative relationship with pinduoduo, realizing direct jump.
it is worth noting that on september 4, in addition to taobao and wechat pay "running in both directions", meituan takeaway and meituan hotel, both under meituan group, which has maintained a mutually beneficial relationship with tencent for many years, opened alipay mini programs and announced their official entry into alipay. in the comments of weibo's hot search, many netizens also called on jd.com to connect to alipay services.
judging from the attitudes of industry insiders, with the two-way cooperation between taobao and wechat pay, and meituan and alipay, the pace of internet interconnection in my country will continue to deepen, which will not only facilitate consumers but also bring win-win results to all parties.
host｜li zhiwen intern wu shujun
source: yangcheng evening news yangcheng school comprehensive cailianshe, 21st century business herald, china youth magazine, sina finance, etc.
